Eric’s written another fascinating piece on divination, giving us an I Ching reading for Spring 2009…
Eric Teissedre is a master astrologer, among other things. You can reach him directly at 415-474-2361, or by email at emerald47@aol.com.
I Ching Divination by Eric Teissedre
Long before the book of the I Ching, shamans were casting the 8 tri-grams as a means of ascertaining information. Divination gives boundaries to the intuitive process and divination can be quite fluid. A single sign can mean many things. An example of this: I was assisting with the management of an apartment building in San Francisco. One day, there was a very loud popping sound coming somewhere in the building. We searched and searched but could not find this very loud noise. So, I cast the I Ching, one hexagram and got “water above fire”. Now, if I had used the book, it wouldn’t have been much help. But, thinking water above fire, we went down to the boiler room and lo and behold, there were small exploding sounds coming from the boiler. This is not to say the book is not valuable for interpretation, especially when you need guidance and you don’t want to project a wishful answer.
I would like to give you an example for the spring, a spring reading. Holding six rather large Chinese coins I have used for some time, I will make a contact with my inner source, which is being done simultaneously to this article being written. I ask that these signs be relevant to those reading this article. What I get is heaven above the lake. If this was to be written using the numbers one and zero, one for yang and zero for yin, or one straight line, zero broken line, it would appear as such.
1
1
1
0
1
1
If you are not used to seeing tri-grams in this fashion, it is the same as yin and yang, straight lines, broken lines.
Interpretation from a purely intuitive perspective: the lake is the ruler. It can symbolize your source. It has a correspondence to Saturn. Saturn is now retrograde. Retrograde means go back, finish those things unfinished, restart your thinking about your true career, find that thing you truly love that is indicated by heaven, make your life as virtuous and as beautiful as possible. The heavenly tri-gram is solar. Try to work for yourself as much as possible. Get away from these nuts who are extracting all this work for insult and little pay. Don’t work for the devil! Work for heaven! We have come through a cycle that has not been virtuous. It has been a time of manipulation in which others own your hard earned money. Pull back, work for yourself, and don’t make investments, not with Saturn retrograde. It can be three years before investments are safe. If you can ride it out, do so. Find who needs your skill, work for them as if you are an independent agent, be willing to move on the minute things are not correct. Be versatile, do not get stuck. There is no better time for self-investment than now. Short term investments can be good, i.e. to buy and sell that fixer-upper, or to eliminate and sell antiques or second hand items.
Last but not least, invest in your own self education. There is a need to believe in the glory of self! Stop empowering those outside of you, or believing that they have more authority or ability because of their credentials.
If you were to see other things in these tri-grams, different from what I saw, it would not make your interpretation less correct. In this system, you stimulate the intuitive process, but have a left-brain tool to guide that process. It is like going to the tarot reader, it would be frustrating if they stopped to interpret each card through the book to verify their reading is on track. This system is part of a number of systems used in China, in ancient times. Some of them have a surprising similarity to divination used in Africa.